The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1887-11-11


cadence. Then Bach turned and gave salu-
tation to the host who had invited him.
But the worst of all discords is moral dis
cord. If society and the world are painfully
discordant to imperfect man, what must they
be to a perfect Coda People try to define
what sin is. II seems to me that sin is get
ting out of harmony with God, a disagree
ment with his holiness, with his purity, with
his love, with his commands; our will clash
ing with his will, the finite dashing against
the infinite, the frail against the puissant, the
created against the Creator IL thousand
musicians, with flute, and cornet-a-piston,
and trumpet, and violoncello, and hautboys,
and trombone and all the wind and stringed
instruments that ever gathered in a Dussel-
dorf Jubilee, should resolve that they would
play out of tune and put concord to the rack,
and make the place wild with shrieking, and
grating, and rasping sounds, they could not
make such a pandemonium as that which
RACES IN sinful soul when God listens to the
play of its thoughts, passions and emotions
discord, lifelong discord, maddening discord.
The world pays more for discord than il
does for consonance. High prices have been
paid for music. One man gave S225 to hear
the Swedish songstreSs in New York, and an
other $625 to hear her in Boston, and another
$3.50 to hear her in Providence. Fabulous
prices have been paid for sweet sounds, but
far more has been paid for discord. The
Crimean war cost 81 zoo, GOO, 900, and our
American civil war over $1,000, OOO, 900, and
the war debts of professed Christian nations
are about S15, 600, 100000. The world pays
for this red ticket, WHICH admits it to the
saturnalia of broken bones, and death ago
MES, and destroyed cities, and plowed graves,
and crushed hearts, any amount Of money
Satan ASKS. Discord! Discord!
But l have to tell you that the song
that the morning stars sang together
at the laying of the worlds corner
stone is to be resumed again. Mozart's
greatest overture was composed one night
when he was several times overpowered with
sleep, and artists say they can tell the places
in the music where he was falling asleep and
the places where he awakened. So the over
ture of the morning stars spoken of in my
text has been asleep, but it will awaken and
be more grandly rendered by the evening
stars of the worlds existence than by the
morning stars, and the vespers will be
sweeter than the mathis. The work of all
good men and women and of all good
churches and all reform associations is to
bring the race back to the original harmony
The rebellious heart to be attuned, social life
to be attuned, commercial ethics to be at
tuned, internationally to be attuned, hemi-
spheres to be attuned-but by what force
and in what way!
In olden time the choristers had a tuning
fork with two prongs, and they would strike
it on the back of pew or music rack and put
it to the ear and then start the tune, and all
the other voices would join. In modern Or
~ HI ,In+o
rightly attuned, and he sounds that, and all
the other performers turn the keys of their
instruments to make them correspond, and
sound the bow over the string, and listen
and sound out over again, until all the keys
are screwed to concert pitch, and the dis
cords melt into one great symphony, and the
curtain hoists, and the baton taps, and audi
ences are raptured with Schumanns "Para-
disc and the Peri" or Rossini's "Stabat Mater"
OF Bach's ''Magnifcat" in D or Gounod's
Redemption"
Now, our world can never DO attuned by
an imperfect instrument. Even Cremona
would not do. Heaven has ordained the only
instrument and it is made out of the wood of
the cross, and the voices that accompany it
are imported voices, cantatrices of the first
Christmas night, when heaven serenaded the
earth with "Glory to God in the highest and
on earth peace, good will to men, Lest we
start too far off and get lost in generalities,
we had better begin with ourselves, get our
own hearts and life in harmony with the
eternal Christ. Oh, for his almighty spirit
to attlne us, to chord our will with his will,
to modulate our life with his life, and bring
us into unison with all that is pure and self
sacrificing and heavenly. The strings of our
nature are all broken and twisted, and the
bow is so slack it cannot evoke anything mel
! lifiuous. The instrument made for heaven to
play on has been roughly twanged and struck
by influences worldly and demoniac. o, mas
ter hand of Christ, restore this split and frac.
tured and despoiled and unstrung nature
until first it shall wall out for this sin, and
then trill with divine pardon.
The whole world must also be attuned by
the same power. A few days ago was in
the Fairbanks weighing scale mandatory
|, of Vermont. Six hundred hands, and they
have never had astrike. Complete haImoLy
between labor and capital, the operatives of
| scores of years in their beautiful homes near
by the mansions of the manufacturers, whose
invention and Christian behavior made the
! great enterprise. So all the world over labor
and capital will be brought into euphony.
| You may have heard what is called the can,
vii Chorus" composed by Verdi, a tune
played by hammers, great and small, now
with mighty stroke, and now with heavy
stroke, beating a great iron anvil. That is
what the world has got to come to-anvil
chorus, yard stick chorus, shuttle chorus,
trowel chorus crowbar chorus, pickax
chorus, gold mine chorus, rail track chorus,
locomotive chorus. 1t can be done, and it
will be done. So all social life will be at
tuned by the Gospel harp. There will
be as many classes in society as
now, but the classes will not be regu-
lated by birth, or wealth, or acct
dent, but by the scale of virtue and benevo-
lence, and people will be assigned to their
places as good, or very good, or most ex-
| cellent. So, also, commercial life will be at
tuned, and there will be twelve in every
dozen and sixteen ounces in every pound,
and apples at the bottom of the barrel will be
as sound as those ON top and silk goods will
not be cotton, and sellers will not have to
charge honest people more than the right
price because others will not pay, and goods
will come to you corresponding with the
sample by which you purchased them, and
coffee will not be chickoried and sugar will
not be sanded, and milk will not be chalked
and adulteration of food will be a states
prison offense. Aye, all things shall be at
| tuned. Elections in England and the United
States will no more be a grand carnival of
defamation and scurrility, but the elevation
| of righteous men in a righteous way.
In the Sixteenth century the singers, called
| the Fischer brothers, reached the lowest bass
ever recorded, and the highest note ever
thrilled was by La Bastardella, and Catalini's
| voice had compass of three and half octaves,
| but Christianity is more wonderful, for it runs
| all up and down the greatest heights and the
deepest depths of the worlds necessity, and
| it will compass everything and bring it in ac-
| cord with the song which the morning stars
| sang at the laying of the worlds corner stone
| All the sacred music i'm homes and concert
halls and churches tends toward this consum-
nation. Make it more and more hearty.
Sing in your families. Sing in your places
of business. If we with proper spirit use
| these faculties, we are rehearsing for the
skies
Heaven is to have new song, an entirely
new song, but l should not wonder if, as
sometime on earth a tune is fashioned out of
many tunes, or it is one tune with the vari-
ations, so some of the songs of the redeemed
may have playing through them the songs of
earth, and how thrilling as coming through
the great anthem of the saved, accompanied
Dy haipefS Win tnelr harIS, ana trumpeterS
with their trumpets, we should hear some of
the strains of Antioch, and Mount Pisgah,
and Coronation, and Lenox, and st. Martins,
and Fountain, and Ariel and Old Hundred
How they would bring to mind the praying
circles, and communion days, and the Christ
mas festivals, and the church worship in
which ON earth we mingled 1 have no idea
that when we bid farewell to earth we are to
bid farewell to all these grand old Gospel
hymns which melted and raptured our souls
for SO many years Now, my friends, if sin
is discord and Righteousness is harmony, let
us get out of the one and enter the other.
After our dreadful civil war was over, and in